Pumpkin's day care report today said that she was "Happy, Adventurous, Chatty, and Busy". And she had a "SUPER DAY!!!!" (that is a direct quote- and yes, I counted the exclamation points). She "used her words", and most importantly, didn't bite anyone. The day care teachers said she gave lots of hugs and "nice touches" today. As we were leaving, one of the other little girls toddled over to wave good-bye. Pumpkin motioned that she wanted down, so I put her down. Pumpkin gave the other little girl a big hug, and then said "bye-bye!" and waved at the entire yard full of kids and teachers.
Pumpkin and this little girl often hug goodbye, and Hubby says she and this little girl also gave each other big hugs this morning when he dropped Pumpkin off. Clearly, Pumpkin's made her first best friend and we need to set up a playdate!
She also slept really well last night- only up once, at about 2 a.m. I suspect this is related to the better day she had today. Of course, noting this connection may not be much help in our ant-biting campaign. If I could figure out how to make sure she always slept well, I would do it even if it made no difference to Pumpkin's day- it makes a huge difference in my day!
Hubby and I are going out tonight. Tim Finn, one of the guys from Split Enz, and a Kiwi superstar, is in town. Since it is well past his American heyday, he's playing at a nice, intimate venue. Hubby would have moped for weeks if I hadn't agreed to go. I'm hoping for another good night of sleep, so that I don't suffer too much tomorrow for the night out tonight.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
At Least She's Cute
Thank you for all the ideas and commiseration yesterday!
We got Pumpkin back into the bath tonight. With a lot of bubbles on our noses and patience, she eventually agreed to sit on my lap in the tub, and from there I eased her into the water. By the end, she was splashing like she used to and saying "noooo...." when asked if she was ready to get out.
Pumpkin's still biting, so we still have to work on that. (And I wouldn't be surprised if the bath thing continues to be harder than it used to be for awhile.)
It was a hard night last night. Pumpkin woke up a lot, and was hard to console. We suspect she is having trouble with the four(!) teeth (canines or incisors- I can't keep them straight) that are coming in now. At 3:30, I finally kicked Hubby out of bed and sent him to the sofa so that Pumpkin could come to bed with me. She slept, but tossed and turned for about 30-45 minutes before she really settled in and let me sleep. Even then, she wanted to be right up against me, with her little face smashed into mine and her hands wrapped in my hair. So I didn't get the best sleep (this is why we don't make more use of cosleeping- Pumpkin is not the best bed partner). I had an all day leadership training session today at work, which was something I would rather not have done on so little sleep. So, to cheer myself up, tonight I'd rather not think about the hard stuff, and want to focus on some of the cute and wonderful things about Pumpkin:
1. Once, about three weeks ago, the dog next door was whining because its owners had gone away and left it outside. Pumpkin was concerned, so I told her the dog was crying, and did the sign for crying (tracing tears on my cheeks). Now, anytime Pumpkin hears a dog whine, many times when she hears a dog bark, and sometimes for no reason we can discern, she looks earnestly at me, says "woof, woof", and does the sign for crying. This is one of the reasons I don't think the random biting incidents mean that she's completely lacking in empathy.
2. Hubby was outside cutting some branches off of bushes in our backyard this evening. He had previously taken the recycling out (what a good Hubby!) and the indoor recycling bins, which are just plastic trash cans, were still outside. Pumpkin dragged one over to Hubby and put it at his feet, clearly intending that he put the branches in it, much like she uses one of her buckets to gather leaves.
3. Pumpkin can say "Boppy" very clearly. She occasionally goes to her room, announces "Boppy!", picks it up, and drags it to the living room so that I can nurse her. She has also started saying "Boppy, Boppy, Boppy!" in the middle of the night when she wakes up and wants to nurse. This is a mixture of cute and annoying.
4. Pumpkin likes to play "Ring around the Rosies". Anyone in the backyard has to play with her. This includes her baby doll. I suspect some of our guests are surprised to find themselves playing Ring around the Rosies at all, let alone while holding one hand of a tiny stuffed doll.
So there are your gratuitously cute toddler stories for the day. And I'll close with a gratuitously cute toddler picture that explains why we are so anxious to get the bath thing sorted out quickly:
We got Pumpkin back into the bath tonight. With a lot of bubbles on our noses and patience, she eventually agreed to sit on my lap in the tub, and from there I eased her into the water. By the end, she was splashing like she used to and saying "noooo...." when asked if she was ready to get out.
Pumpkin's still biting, so we still have to work on that. (And I wouldn't be surprised if the bath thing continues to be harder than it used to be for awhile.)
It was a hard night last night. Pumpkin woke up a lot, and was hard to console. We suspect she is having trouble with the four(!) teeth (canines or incisors- I can't keep them straight) that are coming in now. At 3:30, I finally kicked Hubby out of bed and sent him to the sofa so that Pumpkin could come to bed with me. She slept, but tossed and turned for about 30-45 minutes before she really settled in and let me sleep. Even then, she wanted to be right up against me, with her little face smashed into mine and her hands wrapped in my hair. So I didn't get the best sleep (this is why we don't make more use of cosleeping- Pumpkin is not the best bed partner). I had an all day leadership training session today at work, which was something I would rather not have done on so little sleep. So, to cheer myself up, tonight I'd rather not think about the hard stuff, and want to focus on some of the cute and wonderful things about Pumpkin:
1. Once, about three weeks ago, the dog next door was whining because its owners had gone away and left it outside. Pumpkin was concerned, so I told her the dog was crying, and did the sign for crying (tracing tears on my cheeks). Now, anytime Pumpkin hears a dog whine, many times when she hears a dog bark, and sometimes for no reason we can discern, she looks earnestly at me, says "woof, woof", and does the sign for crying. This is one of the reasons I don't think the random biting incidents mean that she's completely lacking in empathy.
2. Hubby was outside cutting some branches off of bushes in our backyard this evening. He had previously taken the recycling out (what a good Hubby!) and the indoor recycling bins, which are just plastic trash cans, were still outside. Pumpkin dragged one over to Hubby and put it at his feet, clearly intending that he put the branches in it, much like she uses one of her buckets to gather leaves.
3. Pumpkin can say "Boppy" very clearly. She occasionally goes to her room, announces "Boppy!", picks it up, and drags it to the living room so that I can nurse her. She has also started saying "Boppy, Boppy, Boppy!" in the middle of the night when she wakes up and wants to nurse. This is a mixture of cute and annoying.
4. Pumpkin likes to play "Ring around the Rosies". Anyone in the backyard has to play with her. This includes her baby doll. I suspect some of our guests are surprised to find themselves playing Ring around the Rosies at all, let alone while holding one hand of a tiny stuffed doll.
So there are your gratuitously cute toddler stories for the day. And I'll close with a gratuitously cute toddler picture that explains why we are so anxious to get the bath thing sorted out quickly:
Monday, September 08, 2008
No One Said It Would Be Easy
This parenting thing is kicking my butt right now. Pumpkin is still biting at day care, and I'm feeling more and more like we're "that family"- you know, the one the teachers all complain about in the break room. Since Pumpkin doesn't really bite at home, we have been trying a Playful Parenting based approach to see if we can get the idea in her head that she should use her words to protest things, not her teeth. I've been having Pumpkin's bear and bunny play with toys and steal them from each other- but Pumpkin is still biting, although she now apparently says "No, no!" after she bites. She is also prone to turn to her bear and shake her finger and say "No, no!" This is very cute, but that wasn't the goal of the exercise.
When I picked Pumpkin up from day care today and found the note indicating that she'd bitten two other kids, the teacher suggested we try modeling the behavior we want (i.e., Pumpkin should say "No, no!" when someone steals her toy, but not bite them first). I thought I had conveyed this plan to Hubby, but when I stole the car keys from him, he came at me with play hitting, which was not the idea at all. So I guess we'll know the technique works if Pumpkin starts hitting instead of biting. We'll have to try again tomorrow, after Hubby has had a chance to rehearse his lines.
Pumpkin has also suddenly gone from a child who screams when she is taken out of the bath to a child who screams when we try to put her in the bath. We don't really have any idea what might have caused this change, and nothing we've tried has convinced her to allow us to wash her without her screaming. She loves bubbles, so I bought some bubble bath. Nope. She likes to play with the water from the hose outside, so we tried a shower with the hand held shower we have in our master bathroom. Nope. Tonight, I tried running a bath in the big bath tub (instead of her little plastic tub) and getting in it first. Nope. I'm out of ideas, so I think we'll just keep trying the bath with Mommy idea for a few days. We seemed to be making progress tonight- she was standing next to the bath tub without her diaper on. And then she peed on the floor and got very upset by that, and wouldn't stop screaming until I got out of the bath and gave her a big hug.
We do have some good news in one area, though- Pumpkin will now eat apples and bananas. The only catch is that they have to be in the whole, unadulterated form. Here is what an apple looks like when Pumpkin is done with it:
We gave her a whole apple at one point, because she kept pointing at the fruit bowl and saying "ball". Now she can say "apple" (well, it sounds a bit like "baa-pple"), and occasionally insists on having one. My fruit consumption has gone way up, since I have to finish the nibbled on apples and bananas. Maybe that will counter-balance the stress I'm feeling about all the biting....
When I picked Pumpkin up from day care today and found the note indicating that she'd bitten two other kids, the teacher suggested we try modeling the behavior we want (i.e., Pumpkin should say "No, no!" when someone steals her toy, but not bite them first). I thought I had conveyed this plan to Hubby, but when I stole the car keys from him, he came at me with play hitting, which was not the idea at all. So I guess we'll know the technique works if Pumpkin starts hitting instead of biting. We'll have to try again tomorrow, after Hubby has had a chance to rehearse his lines.
Pumpkin has also suddenly gone from a child who screams when she is taken out of the bath to a child who screams when we try to put her in the bath. We don't really have any idea what might have caused this change, and nothing we've tried has convinced her to allow us to wash her without her screaming. She loves bubbles, so I bought some bubble bath. Nope. She likes to play with the water from the hose outside, so we tried a shower with the hand held shower we have in our master bathroom. Nope. Tonight, I tried running a bath in the big bath tub (instead of her little plastic tub) and getting in it first. Nope. I'm out of ideas, so I think we'll just keep trying the bath with Mommy idea for a few days. We seemed to be making progress tonight- she was standing next to the bath tub without her diaper on. And then she peed on the floor and got very upset by that, and wouldn't stop screaming until I got out of the bath and gave her a big hug.
We do have some good news in one area, though- Pumpkin will now eat apples and bananas. The only catch is that they have to be in the whole, unadulterated form. Here is what an apple looks like when Pumpkin is done with it:
We gave her a whole apple at one point, because she kept pointing at the fruit bowl and saying "ball". Now she can say "apple" (well, it sounds a bit like "baa-pple"), and occasionally insists on having one. My fruit consumption has gone way up, since I have to finish the nibbled on apples and bananas. Maybe that will counter-balance the stress I'm feeling about all the biting....
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
The Best Laid Plans (II)
Pumpkin came down with a stomach bug this weekend. Some consequences are:
1. I took my pump to work today. Why cut off the breastmilk when she's sick?
2. Hubby had to come home sick today.
3. My Mom is here watching Pumpkin during the day, since Pumpkin can't go to day care.
4. I now know that cleaning baby vomit off of a car seat falls somewhere below "getting multiple cavities filled" on my list of things I'd like to do on any given day.
5. Posting may be erratic until things return to normal... whatever that is.
1. I took my pump to work today. Why cut off the breastmilk when she's sick?
2. Hubby had to come home sick today.
3. My Mom is here watching Pumpkin during the day, since Pumpkin can't go to day care.
4. I now know that cleaning baby vomit off of a car seat falls somewhere below "getting multiple cavities filled" on my list of things I'd like to do on any given day.
5. Posting may be erratic until things return to normal... whatever that is.
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